An Introductory Post, except... I don't know myself very well...

Herein lies both the problem and the point of starting this blog. I don't know much about much, actually, when it concerns surviving my twenties. I think we should learn together. 

Perhaps I should start by sharing some immutable facts about myself that we can all use as a springboard.

•  My name is Grace. 

This is perhaps the most basic fact, therefore a good place to begin. I like my name well enough, though I have never particularly embodied it. My dad once told me that naming me 'Grace' was about as accurate as naming my little brother 'Balance'. He spent most of his childhood falling over; I spent mine proving that I have never been, not in any conceivable sense of the word, remotely graceful.

• I am 21 and anxious about it. 

I feel so young and so old! Feeling a little lost and feral isn't freeing anymore like it was at seventeen when I set out to roam open fields and parties, warm beer cradled in hand as I stalked about beneath burgeoning twilight looking for boys to kiss and rollies to 'borrow'. I still feel that way, lost and feral, but I am quickly discovering I am yet to grow out of feeling awkward and progress into feeling adult.

• I am recently single and lonely, I think. 

For now, just know this-- I allow heartbreak to flatten me. I have tried to push through it, the sadness, betrayal, and gnawing grief, but I think feeling it fully is an essential part of who I am. And who I am happens to be an expert in wallowing. I have a small (but fiercely loyal) group of girlfriends at home, but chose to study abroad and found myself floundering on foreign soil rather than flourishing as I had hoped. Enter-- boyfriends. They have been both an anchor and a riot in my time away. Now I am living without one (Vogue said they're embarrassing anyway). 

• I am a university student (for now). 

I have studied for my BA in English Literature and Creative Writing and am on the cusp of completing my final year. While this should be a point of celebration, I find myself panicking about what comes next in life (or, more accurately, what doesn't). I have grand ideas for the future but I do not have a job lined up, nor any clear path that might lead me to actualising them. 

• I am spiralling. 

This needs no explanation. The world is overwhelming, and I am overwhelmed. 

These points are, as I said, factual. Though not particularly glamorous. I do love writing, though-- which somehow manages to be both. 

Oh-so long ago when I was just a teenaged girl, I began crouching in the shadows of Tumblr and posting occasionally. Since then, I have written three flawed novels about characters I invented who --inevitably-- fall madly in love, I have stuffed journals by waxing poetic about crushes and boyfriends and eventual exes, and yes, I must confess that I have dabbled in the art of fan-fiction, too. 

Writing about other people, real or imagined, has never been an issue. Until recently-- when I made it one. I have realised that I put a lot of pressure on myself to be, as Hannah Horvath said in HBO's Girls, "the voice of my generation". Think the likes of Emily Bronte or Virginia Woolf or even today's Sally Rooney. To make my writing good, when really it just needed to be honest. 

This is honest: I have never written about myself, because I do not really know myself. 

And because it feels confronting, like staring into your own bathwater, silky with soap, still warm, oddly intimate, and yet... seeing a stranger blink back in its surface-- one you don't recognise, or maybe don't like very much. It is uncomfortable, messy, and quite frankly, terrifying. But maybe that's exactly why it's worth doing. 

So, without further ado, welcome to my twenties! This is not a guide on how to navigate them well, but how to deal with their agonies realistically while always, always remembering to give yourself a little bit of grace.

Let's all spiral, grace-fully xx